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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26106751">You Can't Keep Running Forever</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/disasterhawke/pseuds/disasterhawke'>disasterhawke</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angry Sex, Blood Mage Hawke (Dragon Age), Blood Magic (Dragon Age), Broken Families, Canon-Typical Violence, Disaster Hawke, F/M, Found Family, Friends to Enemies to Lovers, Gen, Hawke in Dragon Age: Inquisition, Non-Explicit Sex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:20:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,571</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26106751</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/disasterhawke/pseuds/disasterhawke</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders was not the one who blew up the Chantry in Kirkwall: Hawke was.</p>
<p>Years later, a wanted fugitive whose friends have almost all abandoned her, she finds herself dragged into a false Calling that threatens to undo the Grey Wardens, and the return of a Tevinter Magister she thought she'd killed.</p>
<p>All of which would be perfectly fine - except for the dwarf rogue who's often seen at the Inquisitor's side.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Anders &amp; Hawke, Female Hawke &amp; Merrill, Female Hawke/Varric Tethras</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>You Can't Keep Running Forever</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Quick note in addition to the above warnings - this story does contain blood magic, and so it does contain deliberate cutting. However, there is nothing in the depiction that implies or refers to cutting as an act of self-harm. Even still, I wanted to mention it incase it's hard for anyone to read &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>This was all Stroud’s fault.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>None of this would have happened if she hadn’t gotten so hypnotised by his ridiculous moustache that she’d found herself saying </span>
  <em>
    <span>sure, I’ve nothing better to do</span>
  </em>
  <span>. As if continuing to live on the run, a fugitive wanted by half a dozen countries and anyone who’d ever been inside a Chantry, was </span>
  <em>
    <span>something to do.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Damnit. If it had been anyone else, anyone at all, one of the thousands upon millions of people in this fucking world who had not, in fact, saved her brother’s life, then she wouldn’t have done it. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Darling, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Isabela had told her once, </span>
  <em>
    <span>don’t get a soft spot for Wardens - it never ends well.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>To that, Marian Hawke could most certainly attest.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But it had not been one of those unimportant randoms who had asked for her help. It was the man who had taken her brother and filled him with so much darkspawn blood that he’d sputtered himself impossibly back to life. The one who had, over and over in the time </span>
  <em>
    <span>after Kirkwall,</span>
  </em>
  <span> taken her on missions. Not because he'd needed her. Just so she’d had a week or two where she’d been fed and watered and </span>
  <em>
    <span>safe.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maker fucking damnit. It was his fault. His fault that she was standing in a cave, staring into the curious face of a tall human man, doing absolutely fucking everything not to look past him at the dwarf standing behind him. Because if she did, the cave wouldn’t be a cave - it would be the broken stones of Kirkwall’s city streets, a crate creaking beneath her, the flickering shadows cast by flame weaving over his horrified expression.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I didn’t realise we were meeting multiple contacts,” the man - Maxwell - said cheerily, holding out his hand for Stroud to shake. He moved the hand towards Hawke. She glared at it pointedly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Stroud raised an eyebrow at her. “My companion is exceptionally rude, but she is also rather - useful. And she has knowledge that will be invaluable to helping the rest of the Wardens.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Helping them?” asked a new voice - a woman in...well bloody shitballs. Seeker armour. The woman stepped forward to the Inquisitor’s side, peering at them. “What has - oh. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Oh.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cassandra Pentaghast’s eyes widened just far enough that Hawke knew it was time to get the fuck out of there. She took a step backwards, left hand flexing behind her back and beginning to trace the glyphs for </span>
  <em>
    <span>anywhere but here </span>
  </em>
  <span>- and everything started happening very quickly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was really something of a blur - but it ended with Stroud stood in front of Hawke, Cassandra’s sword clashing against his shield, and the Inquisitor doing an impressively nimble combat roll to get himself out of the fray. The Inquisitor’s other companion had stepped forward, too, but seemed mostly interested in watching what was going on, eyebrows raised in amusement.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Varric had not moved.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That was the worst part, the heart wrenchingly familiar part. The part that tore her insides so deeply that Hawke found herself unable to do anything but make a deflecting quip. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Stroud, I think our Seeker friend here may just have recognised me. A potentially rather fatal possibility that </span>
  <em>
    <span>I fucking warned you about you raging arsehole.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Inquisitor, stand back,” Cassandra said, evidently not focused on the fact that the man had already quite handily gotten himself out of the way. “This woman is an apostate.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>From behind, the curious man remarked, in an accent that sounded suspiciously Tevene, “Really, Seeker, are not all mages -”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This woman is a murderer!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Really, Cassandra,” Maxwell said, stepping forward, “most of us are, these days. I’m sure -”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She blew up a Chantry, Inquisitor! She murdered a </span>
  <em>
    <span>Grand Cleric, </span>
  </em>
  <span>not to mention dozens of faithful!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The last glyph completed. Hawke placed her foot to the left and vanished into the Fade. The cold, clammy touch of the in-between washed over her only for a moment as she stepped out the other side - into the tunnel behind them. The tunnel that led to safety. That led to somewhere where she could keep running.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The tunnel that was right in the firing line of a raised crossbow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hands where I can see them, Hawke,” Varric growled roughly. His finger was on the trigger - he wasn’t even bothering to hide it. “Now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The next glyph tumbling into nothingness, Hawke laced her fingers together on the top of her head and sighed. She waited until everyone had caught up with her before speaking - though they were standing back a little more now, she noticed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” she said, looking at the Seeker. “I did.” There was a pause where they all stared at her. “I’m sorry, did you expect me to deny it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If you are the person I think you are,” Maxwell said carefully, his fingers tapping on the hilt of a dagger, “then I don’t imagine there would be much point.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke didn’t dare move. Not because she was afraid of dying - she’d often wished for it, in the passing years - but because she didn’t want to die knowing that Varric was willing to shoot her in the head. Even if she was pretty certain he was. That tiny slither of doubt was </span>
  <em>
    <span>everything.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Taking a careful, shallow breath, she sighed. “The Wardens need your help, Inquisitor. I mean they really, really need your help. And if me being here is going to stop that, then I would like to leave.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maxwell narrowed his pale eyes, then flicked them over his companions. He paused on Varric, and on Cassandra too, then settled at last upon Stroud.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How vital is her information?” he asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Stroud’s face was too shadowed for her to see his expression, but Hawke suspected he looked more than a little remorseful. He had to have known. Sure, there was a chance he had other contacts in the Inquisition, but if he hadn't been writing to Varric all this time she'd eat her damn staff. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Stroud sheathed his sword and slung his shield over his back, and stepped forward.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There is no one,” Stroud said with certainty, “who knows more about what you face than Marian Hawke.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A moment passed. The Inquisitor looked at him with the same, discerning gaze - then his left hand moved in a motion not unlike Hawke’s own. She was so quick to notice it after years of fighting mages that she got stuck trying to work out what glyph he’d been drawing. But no one held their hand like that whilst casting, it looked ridiculous, and - shit. He wasn’t casting. He was signalling. It was a sign, like the ones they’d used in the smuggling ring. She just had to -</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Hawke didn’t get to work out what he’d been signalling, because by the time she realised what was happening, Varric had already shot her in the leg.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There were occasionally moments in Marian Hawke’s life that, as soon as they occurred, she abruptly and immediately realised had marked her indelibly for years to come. The first time she saw her father cast a spell; the first time </span>
  <em>
    <span>she</span>
  </em>
  <span> cast a spell. The moment Bethany died. Flemeth’s dragon form as a silhouette against the sky. The first time they took the boat towards the Gallows and her heart screamed </span>
  <em>
    <span>no no no I won’t</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The feeling of the ground shaking when the first explosion went off. The panic when the second one didn’t fire properly, because she hadn’t set the charge well enough. Fenris’s body shattering when she forced too much magic through his lyrium veins. Agony in the lines on Aveline’s face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As she pulled the blood from her leg and supercharged it into a paralysing blast of force, Hawke mentally added: </span>
  <em>
    <span>the expression on Varric’s face just after he shot me.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then, yanking the arrow out, Hawke turned and started running.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She wove the healing in her hands as she sprinted, slamming it down onto the puncture wound just as she made it out of the tunnel. There were voices behind her now, broken and incoherent but fraught with rage and disbelief. Sweeping a hand up, Hawke summoned an ice field over the slope before her and jumped. Skidding was easier than running, and though it gained her a dozen more bruises when she rolled to her feet at the end of the slide, it solidified her headstart.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The fireball she hurled over her shoulder was casual; she didn’t have time to look at it. She had to stop them copying her trick, and then she had to get the fuck out of line of sight. Bianca’s firing range was astronomical and gave absolutely no shits about crosswind.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fortunately, Crestwood was nothing if not hilly, and there were plenty of trees and rocks to keep behind her as she ran. Her chest was burning now; she’d hasted herself as soon as she got going again, and that was going to leave her exhausted as soon as it wore off. But she needed it. She had to get away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was a habit that she just couldn’t break. Not even for Stroud. Not even to keep from losing yet another friend. That was the problem. That had always been her problem. She just couldn't fucking stop.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time Hawke collapsed from spell fatigue, she was at the edge of the lake. The Inquisitor had drained it, so the locals said, revealing all the old buildings within. It was enough for her to find somewhere to hole up for a moment - to catch her breath and down more lyrium than was probably recommended by any apothecary with any sense.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And to think, properly, for the first time: </span>
  <em>
    <span>what the fuck is Varric doing with the Inquisition.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not to mention the Seeker. Six months ago, in a fit of nostalgia, Hawke had made the ill-advised decision to go to the battlefields in Ostagar and look at the place where Carver had fought. To walk through the wilds up to Lothering and see the place she’d grown up. She had stayed well away from the village itself, but even still there were rumours of the Chantry hunting a black-haired mage woman by the time she’d left.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The only description she’d ever been able to get was of a Seeker. A Seeker who looked very much like the woman who had just tried to - kill her? Arrest her? It was hard to tell with Templars, and the Seekers might as well have been Templars.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Why the fuck was Varric with them.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Seeker had to know. She had to know who Varric was to - who Varric was. He wasn’t exactly quiet about his identity. Or incognito, with Bianca at his side at all times.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fuck, her leg hurt. She’d healed it, but sprinting the moment it’d happened had been a monumentally ludicrous move. Not to mention pulling the arrow out. She could practically hear Anders’s voice saying </span>
  <em>
    <span>really, Hawke, you </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>know</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> we don’t remove things from puncture wounds! It’s a miracle you didn’t die of blood loss!</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He probably wouldn’t have approved of using the lost blood for blood magic, either, but then he and Justice had always tried to steer her away from it. In a different world, Hawke thought, they might have been the other way round. Instead Anders was the one who had looked at her with horror when she’d done what needed to be done, and Hawke had fled Kirkwall alone.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d done it for him. For Bethany. For Merrill. For</span>
  <em>
    <span> herself.</span>
  </em>
  <span> For every mage who had ever been taken to a tower and imprisoned ‘for their own good’, only to be beaten and tortured by the people meant to guard them - or have their soul ripped out of them in the rite of Tranquility. For every single person that her Maker-damned cousin had annulled in that fucking tower. For the people who Meredith had shackled in the Gallows and the ones who had tried to flee and the ones who hadn’t managed to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The world was broken, and its people were ignorant. They would never have known the truth unless they were forced to rethink everything.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was the only way.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was the only way.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It had to have been.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Four days later, as Hawke made her way towards the Storm Coast to get the ever loving fuck out of Ferelden, a raven found her. On instinct, Hawke killed it - ravens were the Inquisition’s tools, and if the bird knew how to find her then it could show them. But when she plucked the letter from the frozen corpse, she found Stroud’s name at the bottom of the letter.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I am sorry, my friend.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I had hoped that the world was ready to see you as I do. As a woman who will do whatever it takes to fight for what she believes. As a woman who has been abused and abandoned by a world that should have celebrated her despite her transgressions. I was wrong.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I mourn not for the loss of my friend, but for the hope that you had started to find some small shard of forgiveness. I know that you do not see it, but I have always known it to be there, as have many of us who have known you these past years.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Know that I will walk into the embrace of Andraste before I permit any harm to come to your brother. I know not what lies ahead for our order, but to guard his life is my duty as his brother - not in blood, but in arms.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It has been my very great honour to know you, Marian Hawke.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Jean-Marc</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She did not open it again, not for a moment in her journey across the Waking Sea. But quietly, softly, it changed the direction of each step she took.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“One minute.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s how long you have to get out of my damn office, Hawke.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I just -”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thirty seconds.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke threw up her hands. “Fucking hell, Aveline, that wasn’t even five.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ten seconds.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Pulling her hood back up, Hawke turned and walked out of the door, slipping back into the crowds in the Viscount’s lobby. Okay, it had been a really stupid idea to go to Aveline for help, but it wasn’t like she had many easily locateable friends.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Wait.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She had at least one more (that she hadn’t killed, gotten killed, or given reason to irrevocably hate her). Turning, Hawke stopped making her way towards the docks and instead headed for the Alienage. With luck, Merrill would still be there. Granted, it had been years, and she’d not written during a single one of them, but still…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The tree that Hawke had long since forgotten the fancy Elvhen name for loomed over her, looking much healthier than the last time she’d seen it. That was a good sign - a sign that Merrill was still here. Keeping her hood close about her head and doing her best to look downtrodden (which wasn’t hard), Hawke slinked her way over to the door that, hopefully, still belonged to her friend.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And knocked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, I’m sorry,” came the familiar lilting voice, and a deep sigh. “I’m not giving out potions today, I - by the Dread Wolf!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke grinned. “More by land and sea, but who knows. Maybe I am the fault of an ancient trickster god. Let's be fair, it'd make a lot of sense."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Get inside, before someone sees you!” Merrill chastised, stepping back and glancing out into the street as Hawke passed her. When the elven woman closed the door a moment later, she bolted it as well.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Look, I know -”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“By Mythal, what are you </span>
  <em>
    <span>doing</span>
  </em>
  <span> here, Hawke? You could have been killed a hundred times over just walking through the city! No, don’t tell me, something dreadfully important is happening and you need to throw yourself into it again, and of course you need my help because no one else understands, but really, Hawke, you could have at least </span>
  <em>
    <span>written</span>
  </em>
  <span> me, sometimes - it wasn’t like I knew where to send any letters! Oh for goodness’ sake, stop smirking at me like that and </span>
  <em>
    <span>say something.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well you haven’t really given me the chance,” Hawke pointed out, her smirk turning to a fond grin. “But, uh, yeah. Something important is happening and...I tried to help but I kind of fucked it up.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sighing again, Merrill sat down and gestured for Hawke to do the same. There was a little more furniture now, Hawke noticed, but more striking were the collections of gifts lined up on the walls and surfaces. Little carvings, a few drawings, bundles of dried flowers. Unlike almost all of them, the one person who’d managed to settle down properly was the bloody Dalish elf.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How bad?” Merrill asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well,” Hawke said, spreading her hands before her, “Varric may have shot me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Merrill stared at her. “I beg your pardon?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Wearily, and not without several interruptions, Hawke explained.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For the entirely of the weeks long trek to Skyhold, Hawke did not stop wondering why the ever loving fuck she'd agreed to this in the first place.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No, she knew why - Merrill had been right. Infuriatingly so.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Oh, Hawke," she'd said. "Really. You're not going to run away, not from this. It's the Wardens, Hawke. And Varric. Of course you're not going to hide if they're in danger, you just...have to help in a slightly different way, is all. You know, without being...well, you."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Completely fucking right.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The journey to Ferelden wasn't awful, but traveling </span>
  <em>
    <span>through </span>
  </em>
  <span>Ferelden - well, that was an adventure and a half. She wouldn’t have managed it at all without Merrill, whose face was not plastered across wanted posters throughout Thedas. Even still, it was hard going. In the end they'd looted the bodies of some unfortunate Inquisition soldiers who hadn't done so well against some Red Templars (and boy, had that been a fun development to explain to Merrill).</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Which was how she'd ended up slipping into the courtyard of the fortress that was Skyhold, a place that she and Stroud had both agreed was utter suicide for her to go into, slipping her way through refugees towards the tavern.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was night, and it was raining, which meant that no one took a second glance at Hawke's raised hood or the way she hunched to hide her face. Thus hidden, she loitered by the entrance to the Herald's Rest, slowly and meticulously scraping the mud from her boots as if intending to enter.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She didn't have to wait long. Varric, it seemed, had not changed his habits - no sooner had the bell rung for closing time than he'd sauntered out of the tavern. In Kirkwall, this was a habit he'd picked up to avoid the worst bar fights, always making his way to his room before the most volatile patrons were informed that no, really, last call means last call.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He was accompanied by the same man she'd seen with the Inquisitor in Crestwood, a tall mage with facial hair that would've made even Stroud envious. Hawke followed them at a distance far enough to be safe, but close enough to hear them talking - which wasn't hard, given that they were still talking at bar volume out of habit.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"...don't see why Maxwell insists on it, to be quite honest with you. It isn't as if I'll be a great deal of use fighting an army of possessed Wardens. Besieging a fortress? In this outfit?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"But an army of demons, Sparkler? Now that's the moment you want as many mages as you can get." Varric sounded so much more relaxed than he had in the cave. "Besides, we've all seen the way he looks at you."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the lantern light, Hawke saw the mage's teeth gleam as he turned to grin down at Varric. "I'm well aware," he replied, running a hand over his hair. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They continued talking, and though a part of Hawke wanted to keep listening - definitely for gossip and not for potential blackmail - they were getting close to a building. She wouldn't be able to keep following as safely soon.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Luckily, as soon as they got inside, entering a long and thick section of the outer wall that seemed to have been converted into quarters, the Tevinter mage gave a flourishing salute and turned down the corridor to the left. Varric, clapping him on the back, turned to the right - and Hawke was left facing the threshold.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She could go in, she realised. He wasn't armed. She could run down the corridor and - and convince him to talk to her. She could tell him...a lot of things. But something in Hawke's gut told her it wouldn't be enough. This was Varric. He played power games for fun. If she wanted to beat him at his own game, she'd need to be patient.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke waited outside long enough to see which light came on, then headed back to camp.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"See," Merrill said, when Hawke stepped out of the shadows. "I told you he wouldn't kill you! How did it go?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"I didn't talk to him."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Hawke! They could be leaving at any moment!"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke shook her head. "Too many soldiers in there still. Moving an army isn't quick - I managed to outrun Sebastian's troops plenty of times because he kept sending them in such big groups. They're not going for a few days at least."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Collapsing into her bedroll, Hawke outlined her plan. Such as it was, anyway.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You know,” Hawke said, rolling her eyes to the ceiling, “when I pictured this, you weren’t pointing a crossbow at my face.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Varric stared at her for a long moment, his expression blank. Then, without untraining his shot, he stepped into the room and kicked the door closed behind him. His shoulders heaved in a sigh.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Seriously? You waited in my sodding bedroom?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I thought yelling hello in the main hall might get a bit too much attention.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He didn’t have his finger fully on the trigger this time, she noticed. It was resting in the usual position he kept it, just to the side, ready but not on edge. In a way, she supposed, that was something of a compliment. Or an insult. Knowing Varric, it was probably both.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No shit,” Varric said, sitting in the chair by the fire, crossbow still trained on her. “If Cassandra so much as suspects -”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She won’t. I’ve been careful. I do know how to do that, you know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Varric continued staring. “Yeah.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d held on a good amount of time, but Hawke winced away from his expression then, which was - well, the last person she’d really seen him look at like this was Bartrand.. But not the day he’d betrayed them; the day they’d found him raving on red lyrium.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And Hawke was becoming increasingly uncertain of her own sanity. What was it they said about madness - doing the same thing over and over?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Look, let me just…” Hawke sat up, out of the lounging position she’d adopted on the bed because it seemed the only thing to do when someone was training a crossbow on you. “I’ll get this out, and then I’ll go, and you don’t have to see me again. I mean it, this time.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As if she’d been the one who’d said it last time. He had. He had been the one who’d stood, Chantry burning behind him, and told her to get the fuck out of his sight. But it probably wasn’t the best thing to get pedantic about. Definitely not whilst he could shoot her with a second’s notice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The patrols go round every half hour,” Varric said, his voice hard again. “One went just before I got here. I want you out before the next one comes.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay. Yes. Fine.” She took a breath. “Stroud was right. I know things about Corypheus that no one else alive does - save maybe Carver. There was stuff in his prison we spent hours pouring over, remember?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You know my memory happens to be pretty good, Hawke.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A chuckle escaped her throat, though it might as well have burned on the way out. “Exactly. Which is why - it won’t be weird, coming from you. If you just happen to know things and tell the Inquisitor. It’d just be your memory being good.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke had never been particularly skilled at reading faces, and Varric had always been good at guarding his emotions, when he’d wanted to. So she had no idea what the series of changes in his expression meant. Frankly, her best guess would have been constipated. His voice, though, that she could read.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You -” he cried a little too loudly, before leaning forward in his chair and dropping his volume. “You came here - </span>
  <em>
    <span>here! </span>
  </em>
  <span>- just to...what. Help?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’d dropped Bianca. Not fully - just enough that he’d be giving her a slow, painful death from a gut wound if he shot her now, rather than a clean bolt through the head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“In here,” Hawke said, pointing at the satchel beside her. “Everything we found in the prison. All of my father’s notes. Everything I remember, or ever worked out. Everything the Wardens know. It’s all there.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Varric’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the catch.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There isn’t -”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Come on, Hawke. I know you. I sodding taught you. There’s always a catch. Or at least a bloody price.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Why </span>
  <em>
    <span>had </span>
  </em>
  <span>she come here?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oh, guilt. Yes, that. Guilt was shit, Hawke decided, her eyes falling on the satchel beside her, hands landing in her lap. Guilt made you do really effing stupid things. Like wander into your ex-best friend’s fortress of people who hated you just because you always had to bloody well </span>
  <em>
    <span>save everyone.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Saving everyone was what had landed her here in the first place; alone and better off dead.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She had to get out of here.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke leapt to her feet, and Varric lunged for his crossbow - pausing with it raised, his eyes falling on her hands. Her hands that, Hawke realised, she had instinctively held up in front of her, fire crackling to life in her palms.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Varric…” she exhaled.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Andraste’s tits, Hawke,” Varric snapped, taking a step towards her and practically hurling the crossbow down onto the table next to him. “I nearly shot you!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But - but you didn’t?” It took a moment for her to get the fire to calm down, her fingers curling over her palms and her hands curling closer to her chest. “This time, anyway.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hawke -”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry, Varric. Okay? I’m sorry. I’m sorry I showed up in Crestwood, and here, and that I keep...turning up and getting in your way. This - this is a good place. You have - friends. I can’t be the one that fucks that up for you again.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His face wasn’t stony anymore. It was furious. Apparently she was starting a collection of </span>
  <em>
    <span>faces I previously only saw Varric pull when looking at Bartrand.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Stalking closer to her, Varric grabbed her by the ridiculous vest on her stolen Inquisition armour and pulled her down, until her face was level with his. “Hawke,” he said again, growling her name, “incase you haven’t noticed, the world isn’t actually about you, right now. Or me, or us. There is a hole. In the sky. A giant fucking hole into the Fade, one that the Inquisitor needs a damned </span>
  <em>
    <span>miracle </span>
  </em>
  <span>to fix. I don’t give a nug’s ass what you do to me. You put everyone at risk just by being here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The world was shaking. No - it just felt like it. Her palms were no longer warm from the fire that had been there, they were hard and tense around the arm Varric had grabbed her with. Her chest felt like ice was spilling out from her heart and consuming every other part of her. Because, like always, Varric was right. It wasn’t about her. And it wasn’t about him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe she’d come here because she wished it was. Just like it used to be. He’d said </span>
  <em>
    <span>us.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>...if there had ever really been an us.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke swallowed, and pulled on Varric’s arm. “Then let me go,” she mumbled, “and I’ll go.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fine.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fine.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Forcing her legs to work out of sheer willpower, Hawke stepped around him and walked to the door.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, I agree with you. I think that Cole would be better here, away from the Warden mages. Though I must warn you, Inquisitor, that he has often been found -”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shit. Hawke. Get back in here and close the door. Now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He didn’t have to ask twice - Hawke had barely put a foot out into the corridor before the Seeker’s voice had reached her, sending her stumbling backwards into Varric’s chest and making him lose his footing. In any other situation, it would’ve been downright hilarious - as it was, Hawke’s frozen heart was just thudding at a thousand beats per minute in her chest.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When they righted themselves, Varric had one of her arms clasped in his hands. “Wardrobe. In the corner.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It seemed unlikely that the Seeker was coming to his room, in Hawke’s opinion, but she knew better than to ignore Varric’s instincts. Most of the time, anyway. So she crossed the room in four quick strides and pulled the wardrobe open, grateful that she hadn’t brought a staff as she crawled in and curled up on top of his spare boots. It was well-made, for a wardrobe - when she pulled the door closed on herself, it let no light inside whatsoever.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All Hawke had to focus on was darkness, the scent of stale boots and whatever it was they cleaned Varric’s shirts in, and how deeply uncomfortable she was. She could hear movement, now and then - the scraping of a chair, footsteps - but muffled as everything now was, it was nigh impossible to work out what exactly she was hearing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It felt like an hour before the door was pulled open and blinding candlelight, which previously had been dim, spilled in and made her wince in pain.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Come on, Hawke,” Varric said, eyes gleaming, “surely you’re not going to stay in there all day.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Only Varric could go from yelling at her to leave to mocking her for hiding in a cupboard - a cupboard he told her to hide in - within a few minutes. Scowling, Hawke clumsily tumbled her way out and back into the room.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Guess I’ll need to be a bit more careful this time,” she said, heading for the door.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Varric shook his head. “They’re still out there. Caught them talking about getting everything ready for heading to Adamant.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Adamant?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sighing, he explained, “It’s where the Wardens are. They’re...the mages are killing the warriors, Hawke. So demons can...you know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke’s heart skipped. It felt like all the blood had rushed out of her face in a desperate attempt to keep her heart beating. But no. No, Carver was in Weisshaupt. Wasn’t he? Stroud would have said something. He would have told her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Look, there’s -” Varric ran his hand through his hair. He’d let it get longer. It suited him. “Cassandra’s just down the hall, still, she’s not gone yet. Her room isn’t in this building so she’ll be going back through. Just...just sit over there, and I’ll tell you what happened.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He didn’t look at her as he was speaking. It felt like the jolt of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Wardens are turning their warriors into demons </span>
  </em>
  <span>had numbed her from the inside out. Hawke sat on the edge of Varric’s bed, fingers tight around her knees, barely able to process what he was telling her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She had left Stroud alone. She had left him alone and this had happened. Maker, she was a terrible friend. The worst.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“When are they leaving?” Hawke asked in the end, when Varric’s story was over and she felt like the words would come out whole.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Starting tomorrow.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke nodded. “Siege machines first, then the bulk of the troops, then the Inquisitor’s people?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lifting his head sharply, Varric narrowed his eyes at her. “Since when are you an expert on military logistics, Hawke?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s amazing what you learn when you’re trying to outrun an army. Though Sebastian never did bother with siege weapons. He might’ve gotten me if he had. Uh. Are you going?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not on this one,” Varric said, settling back in his chair. “Let’s just say the Inquisitor’s got a similar skillset. Too many cooks and all that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke raised an eyebrow. “I did notice that. Smuggler’s cant? I hope your spies are keeping that information quiet.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, like you get to judge people, Hawke. You spent years smuggling in Kirkwall.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, but I’m not the leader of a group of religious crusaders.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With a snort that wasn’t complimentary, Varric replied, “That’s probably for the best.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She could follow the army. Go with them to this Adamant - she and Merril had disguises good enough to sneak into the army, pretend they were recruits. They were both using half-length staves now, the sort you could hide in a coat until you </span>
  <em>
    <span>really </span>
  </em>
  <span>needed them. The two of them could make a pretty big difference to a siege.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hawke.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Huh?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Whatever you’re thinking is a terrible idea.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her eyes flickered up to his, then away. “I have to do something, Varric. This is my fault. Corypheus wouldn’t be free if it weren’t for me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Were you not listening to me earlier?” Varric shot back, the tension that had faded returning to him as he sat up in the chair. “You’ve done more than enough, Hawke.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But I can -”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hawke. You’re not a solution anymore. You’re just a problem. Honestly?...I think you always have been.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It hurt because he was right.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He was right, but it was so wrong, because it was coming from him. From Varric. Every single other person had questioned her at some point, every person who came in and went out of their unruly family, the family that she had broken because she’d found something more important than them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Was it really a family if it couldn’t function without one person?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You know what your problem is, Hawke? You don’t trust anybody. You never have.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The fuck? Varric, I trusted you. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You. </span>
  </em>
  <span>And you told me to get out of your sight!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You blew up the Chantry, Hawke.” He stood up, throwing his hands and letting out a huff of breath. “What else do you think I was going to say?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What had she expected?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Really?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Maybe that you trusted me enough to ask me</span>
  <em>
    <span> why,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Hawke found herself saying, even though it felt like everything inside of her was dissolving. “Maybe that I meant enough to you that you’d at least let me get a damn word out!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Varric was stood in front of her now, one hand fisted at his side and the other gesticulating wildly as he hissed in her face. “I </span>
  <em>
    <span>did</span>
  </em>
  <span> ask, Hawke. You just weren’t listening.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I -”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You took us through the caverns in Sundermount. Looking for ‘ingredients’ for a ‘potion’. Remember? And while we all had our arms up to the elbow in nug shit, you were collecting lyrium dust.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Varric -”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shut up, Hawke. Shut up. You had your chance to tell us what was going on. What you were doing.” His voice was cracking, and he was holding her by the coat now. “Instead you lied.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Varric shook her sharply, making her head rattle. She felt numb.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She had done that, hadn’t she.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You lied to </span>
  <em>
    <span>me,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Hawke. You didn’t trust </span>
  <em>
    <span>me.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke blinked, and she was back in that cavern, sneaking round the corner to scrape dust from the lyrium vein that she’d spotted on the way through. She’d hoped to have reason to gather it openly, but they’d hardly fought anything at all - just a few spiders. Nothing challenging. Nothing that meant she needed to worry about their lyrium stores.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d heard his laughter, when she’d been knelt by that vein, jar and knife shaking in her hands.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d wanted to tell him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She hadn’t.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I didn’t want you to hate me,” Hawke said, her voice cracking. Her eyes were closed now - he was so close, but she didn’t want to look at him. To see the expression she would never read as anything other than betrayal.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fingertips in her hair, cradling the back of her skull, would she rather die from him snapping her neck than shooting her?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Damnit, Hawke.” He was so close; his breath was brushing against her skin. “I wish I hated you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It didn’t make any sense. None at all. She had broken him, betrayed him, lied to him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But there were lips pressing against hers and warmth, warmth that rushed all the way from Hawke’s mouth to the rest of her body, pushing the numbness away. Varric kissed her and pulled away; then did it again, and again, pausing only to curse her or pull her tighter against him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Varric,” she whimpered, as his hands began tearing at her stolen uniform, pulling fabric and buttons and clasps.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fingers closed over her lips, rough pads catching on wet skin. “Hawke - don’t. Don’t talk.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Heart racing, Hawke responded in the only way that made any sense with one of his hands on her mouth and the other reaching into her shirt: she parted her lips and licked Varric’s fingers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She would give everything to hear the sound he made in response every day for the rest of her life.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was a terrible idea. It was. There was nothing about this that was sensible - she needed to get out of Skyhold, she needed to not make his life worse, and she needed to - fuck. She needed to stop him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Varric.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I said don’t, Hawke.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He was stronger than her, she was pretty sure. He was also faster. The only way she was going to get a word in was by making him think she was playing along. And she wanted to - Maker’s breath, how she wanted to. But he was right. The world wasn’t about them right now. There couldn’t be a them right now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Varric kicked his boots off one by one, then pulled her back against him, one hand slipping up under the shirt he’d half-opened and brushing a thumb so lightly against her nipple that Hawke gasped. No, she couldn’t lose it, not now. He needed her. He just didn’t realise it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So when he climbed up onto the bed with her, Hawke hooked one leg around Varric’s waist and climbed on top of him. She could feel him hard between her legs; it took everything she had to grab his hands and pin them down either side of his head. Golden eyes flashed dangerous as they glared at her, both of them panting for breath.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Varric, we can’t do this,” Hawke said, willing herself not to look away. “Not right now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eyes closing, Varric exhaled sharply. “Shit.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Besides, uh - not that I’m objecting, but what happened to humans not being your type?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He licked his lips, took another breath, then opened his eyes. “Guess you’re not the only liar here, Hawke.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was something about the growled edge to his voice that made Hawke sharply, immediately aware of where she was. Letting go of his hands, she slipped off both him and the bed both, stumbling to her feet and becoming interested in the buttons on her shirt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s Bianca,” Varric said, drawing Hawke’s attention back off.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She raised an eyebrow. “Your crossbow?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well...not exactly.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Andraste’s tits,” Hawke swore, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. “Isabela was right, wasn’t she? You </span>
  <em>
    <span>did </span>
  </em>
  <span>name Bianca after someone.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Varric sat up on his elbows, giving Hawke a view of his shirt. Or lack of one. She’d never understood how he hadn’t frozen his nipples off in the Free Marches. “Yeah, well,” Varric said, shrugging one shoulder, “we broke up. Again. Properly. As much as you can break up with a married woman.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bottom lip catching between her teeth, Hawke froze. “You - wait. Did you just try to get me to sleep with you as...a rebound? Shit, Varric, really?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You should really meet her, Hawke, the two of you are like peas in a fucking pod.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What, did she also lie to you about blowing up a Chantry?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” Varric said, sitting up fully and meeting her gaze steadily. “She just helped Corypheus get free from his damn prison.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry. What?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke wouldn’t have been surprised to be told that they’d spent literal minutes staring at each other, processing both what had almost happened and what, apparently, Varric’s ex-girlfriend had done.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Because it meant - it wasn’t Hawke’s fault.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>None of this was her fault.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d killed Corypheus, and they’d left all that remained of him trapped there, just incase. And - and Bianca, whoever the fuck she was, had freed him. Everything she’d done in the past weeks, from going with Stroud’s ridiculous plan to running away in Crestwood to coming up with her own even more ridiculous plan was…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>...not her fault.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You didn’t think,” Hawke said, her voice coming out low and sharp, “that you might have considered opening with that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Varric glared. “Sorry, Hawke, I forgot that you’re entitled to everyone else’s secrets.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck you, Varric.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Alright! Fine. You know now. It’s still got nothing to do with you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Stepping back up to the end of the bed, her knees bumping into Varric’s, Hawke leant down and planted a hand beside him, staring level with his face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It has everything - </span>
  <em>
    <span>everything</span>
  </em>
  <span> to do with me, you ass,” Hawke hissed, lifting her other hand and gesturing wildly in the direction of the rest of Skyhold. “Did you not fucking hear me? All of this, everything your </span>
  <em>
    <span>friends</span>
  </em>
  <span> are dealing with, I thought it was my fault. Mine. So I’m sorry, Varric, if finding out it was your fucking secret girlfriend’s fault isn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>something I’m entitled to know. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Maybe, if you’d just told me that in the first place, I wouldn’t be here being a </span>
  <em>
    <span>problem.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Varric’s mouth fell open.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hawke…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You know what,” Hawke said, laughing. “Fine. You think I’m a problem?” She climbed back onto the bed, into his lap, forehead resting against his as she looked down at him. “Then I might as well be a problem.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Golden eyes flicked up at her. His hands twitched, then moved - one splaying over her hip, the other lacing into her hair. “Hawke…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“For once in your life, Varric,” Hawke whispered against his lips, “just. Don’t. Talk.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d broken one of the buttons on the stupid uniform trying to do it up, but that didn’t matter - it ripped when he pulled it off her anyway. Piece by piece, they tore and stumbled themselves up onto the bed properly, pausing only to kiss so roughly that Hawke could taste blood that could have been either hers or his.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Varric pulled her trousers off, his fingers traced the jagged, vicious scar on her left thigh, his touch softening for the briefest moment. He pressed his lips to it - then higher, and higher, until Hawke was forced to grind her teeth to keep from crying out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This was still a terrible idea, of course - everything about Varric seemed to be, now - but Hawke found she no longer cared.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Light spilled into the room at a painfully early hour.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke found herself awake first, which wasn’t surprising - she’d always been a light sleeper, and Varric was most certainly the opposite. His face was planted fully into the pillow when she came to, eyes flicking over to check that the whole thing hadn’t been - well, it was more likely to be a demon getting in her brain than anything. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Strange. They’d been coming for her more and more, but she’d slept without so much as a whisper from one of them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time Varric woke up, Hawke had done enough listening to work out that they had a very, very big problem. But it was easier, of course, to run away. So she buried her head into his shoulder instead as he stirred, smelling the taste of his skin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You, uh. You okay?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke closed her eyes and pressed her face against his chest, wrinkling her nose as the hair tickled it. “They’re already moving the soldiers.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, shit,” Varric sighed, head flicking up and then crashing back onto the pillow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I meant to leave. Really. Before it was too late.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, Chuckles. I know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The sound of the nickname made something sharp pulse in Hawke’s chest. “Varric?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke wasn’t sure what she’d intended to say. What came out was: “Sometimes I think it was wrong.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Varric sighed, tangling one hand in her hair. “You’ve done a lot of things wrong.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Kirkwall.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...oh.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fingers splayed over his chest, Hawke closed her eyes and did her best to create one of those indelible memories from the feeling of his body, warm and real against her skin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s not enough,” she said, softly. “Is it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Varric shifted onto his side, cradling her head in his hands. He pressed his lips to the corner of her mouth, then shook his head. “No. It isn’t.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It didn’t hurt. It seemed odd to her, at first, but it had stopped hurting the moment she’d said it aloud. She’d already known. She’d always known she regretted it, even though she knew she’d do it again, given the chance. The regret was the price. She had changed the world, and the world had made her pay.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I have to go, Varric.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hands pulling her close, lips against hers, for a moment she thought he was going to say no, no, stay with me. It’s okay. I forgive you. You are enough.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But instead all Varric said was, “Yeah, Hawke. You have to go.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Snow had fallen in the night. It crunched beneath Hawke’s feet as she walked through the trees towards their camp, a sensation that she had delighted in as a child. Getting out of the fortress had taken some doing, but for all that the number of people milling around had made it more dangerous, it had also made it easier. When she’d caught attention, Varric had made a timely appearance, greeting the tall man in furred armour that Hawke was reasonably certain was Knight-Captain Cullen, though that made about as much sense as - well, anything.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The camp was almost invisible, covered as the pale tent was in snow, but as Hawke approached she could hear the sound of humming.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How in Thedas have your toes not frozen off, Merrill?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Stepping out from behind the tent, one of the wooden pegs falling limp in her hand, Merrill beamed - and then frowned. “Hawke! Where have you been, I’ve been worried sick!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I, uh…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And look at you!” Merrill continued, padding silently over and raising a hand to Hawke’s cheek. “You’re covered in scratches, and marks, and - ohhh.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke cleared her throat, and reached up to cover the splaying red spot on her throat that really couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than what it was. “I’m sorry I took so long,” she said, before adding - upon receiving a questioning look - “but...I’m not really that sorry.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You know, Hawke, I don’t think I’ll ever really understand you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s probably for the best.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I mean, the last time you saw him he shot you!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not sure this was all that different.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Merrill sighed, and pressed the tent peg into Hawke’s hand. “Well, come on then. Help me with this, and tell me what the plan is. Are we following the army? I saw them start leaving this morning.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Actually,” Hawke said, moving to pull the next peg out and beginning to untie the cord from around it, “no. We’re - we’re done, Merrill. Varric has all the notes, he can help the Inquisitor. We’re going home.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Frowning, Merril leaned around the tent and said, “I hope you’re not just saying this because you feel guilty. I don’t mind coming along, you know. The alienage can survive without me for a few weeks.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If there was a Maker, Hawke thought, he had to have made Merrill personally. As a gift to the world. A gift that Hawke was relatively certain none of them deserved. The day Hawke had destroyed the Kirkwall Chantry, Merrill had taken her hand and said: </span>
  <em>
    <span>it isn’t what I would have done, Hawke. But I do understand.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She always had. She’d understood the day that Hawke had come to her, shaking with nerves, telling her that she’d read something in a book and she couldn’t get the idea out of her head. The idea that blood magic wasn’t all about demons. That there was more to it. That it might even be a more natural form of magic than the sort they took from lyrium.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Of course, Merrill had also hit her about the head for failing to notice that was the thing the elf had been trying to show her all along.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Hawke couldn’t quite get the thoughts onto her tongue, so instead she stepped around the tent and pulled Merrill into a hug. “I know. But this isn’t our fight. Not anymore. We need to let other people do it, this time.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay,” Merrill said, looking unconvinced as they pulled apart. “But what about Corypheus?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That would actually be Bianca’s fault.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The crossbow?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not precisely…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They parted in the Storm Coast.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Merrill took a boat back across the sea to the home Hawke would never get to have again, and Hawke turned and walked in the direction of the last gift the elf had left her with. A place, a name, and a codeword. She hadn’t explained what they were, but Hawke had known what it was at once.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Which was how she’d ended up in the middle of Orlais, in a region owned by - of all people - Cyril de Montfort. It was a small town, but one on a trade route to Val Royeaux, which made it seem a little larger than it was, with all of the merchants staying in the many inns that sat outside the town’s walls.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was one of these inns she found herself in, now divested of her Inquisition uniform and dressed instead in the same fashion as the merchants that filled the bar around her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What can I get you, cherie?” called one of the women behind the bar, flashing her a warm smile. “You must be tired after the road, oui?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Taking off her plumed hat and holding it to her chest, Hawke nodded, even dipping into a small bow. “Bien sûr, madame, it is a long road indeed. But I am here to meet a friend. He says that he keeps a room in the back - you surely must know him, for he has the most striking blue eyes.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The only thing worse than Hawke’s outfit was her Orlesian accent, but the moment she dropped the codeword the woman’s eyes widened, then became all smiles.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah! Yes, ‘e ‘as told me that ‘e was expecting an old friend. Please, follow me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The woman led her into a side room that laid behind the bar, filled with stock - then into another corridor, which coiled around and led to a set of stairs. There she stopped, and turned to face Hawke, her expression changing to one of concern.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is it urgent? He has a few patients, now, but I am sure he can make time for you.” All trace of the woman’s accent was gone, replaced by plain Ferelden. “If it’s for yourself, that is?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke chuckled, then rubbed the back of her neck. “I - actually really am an old friend.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The woman’s eyes narrowed. “The healer does not have any old friends, madame.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Getting a serious sense of déjâ-vu, Hawke sighed and held out her palm, facing upwards. Without a word, she clicked her fingers and sparked a single flame between thumb and forefinger.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh,” the woman said, eyes widening. “I see. Well, I’m sure just this once…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At the top of the stairs was not another corridor, but instead a door - bolted, it transpired, from the inside. Hawke was let in by a young elven man who was dressed in similar tavernkeeper’s clothing, and after a quiet conversation that she caught very little of - being as it was entirely in Orlesian - the barmaid smiled at Hawke and went back down the stairs behind them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“‘e is this way, madame,” the young man said, bowing and leading Hawke through.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was three rooms, actual rooms, so clearly things had gotten better since Kirkwall. There were only two patients, both of whom were asleep in their beds as the elf led her through to the furthest room - through the door on the far side of the long, narrow main room.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Excusez-moi, monsieur. Zere is a woman in very strange clothing ‘ere to see you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh come on,” Hawke said, waving her feathered hat in frustration. “I don’t look that ridiculous.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leaning against the now-open door, mouth parted in surprise, Anders gathered his wits enough to say, “Actually, Marian, you look very much like a peacock. It’s no wonder you’ve managed to get here without being arrested. In Orlais, you fit right in.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A great deal of convincing, explaining, and several bottles of Orlesian wine that were so good they were frankly wasted on her later, Hawke had managed to get Anders to let her stay.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But only for a few weeks,” he insisted, as he poured the last of the fourth bottle into her goblet. “I won’t risk my patients by housing a fugitive.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She really had intended to keep her word. It wasn’t like it was fun, living in three rooms that she couldn’t leave, dressed in clothes that were a mixture of too large and too small (depending on whether Anders had given her them, or Gilles, as the elf had turned out to be called). For the first week she’d slept on the floor in Anders’s room, until he’d gotten sick of her complaining about how much her back hurt and told her to get into the damn bed before she made Justice wake up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But somewhere in the sixth week, there had been a patient who’d been injured in a cart accident. They’d lost so much blood that Anders was convinced there was nothing he could do. He’d left the room to tell the man’s husband, who was waiting anxiously in Anders’s office, leaving Hawke next to the dying man.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She knew very little about healing, even with the time she’d spent there. But blood - blood, she knew about.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So she’d stolen Gilles’s dagger, the one he kept under his pillow and thought no one knew about, and sliced cleanly across her left arm. Her blood sounded the same as the blood the man beneath her had, in a way that she couldn’t describe, but Merrill alone had always understood. Weaving her hands, Hawke had pulled enough blood out of herself to weave into the man’s wounds, flooding his system with what it needed to keep going.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d hidden her bandaged arm behind her back whilst his husband had sobbed into the shoulder of the miraculously recovered man, hoping she didn’t look too pale, and doing her best not to fall over. Quietly, Anders had stepped behind her, wrapped one magic-wreathed hand around her wound, and held her steady against him with the other.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can’t explain it,” Anders said, when the men showered him with questions and thanks in equal measure. “You must simply have had the strength to fight through. It is truly a miracle.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When they’d left, Anders had picked her up and carried her straight into the bed, spending the entire time ranting half as himself and half as Justice about how she was going to get them all killed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And when he’d pulled the blankets up to cover her shaking body, he’d pressed his lips to her forehead and murmured, “Thank you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After that, they’d never discussed her leaving again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The inn became convinced Hawke was Anders’s lover, and since they’d both spent several years in Kirkwall living with the fact that everyone thought that, neither of them bothered to correct it. Sleeping in the same bed meant they could wake each other when the nightmares got too much, or when demons tried to creep in, especially in the days after Hawke had saved a patient just like the first man.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Merrill wrote to Hawke with updates, and Anders got letters from both her and Aveline, who it turned out had kept in contact with everyone but Hawke. Each time that one of them mentioned Varric, reminded them that he was still alive, Hawke’s heart clenched.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But little, by little, by lots, time passed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Marian.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke sighed, pausing halfway through the spell she was casting, holding the magic as pins and needles on the tips of her fingers. “I know, I know, it’s scarring. I’m trying, alright? I’m getting there.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A hand wrapped around her shoulder. “Let me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Anders, I can do th-” Hawke began, turning round as she spoke - and putting her eyes on the person who was standing behind him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fuck.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The spell tumbled from her fingers, leaving the woman on the bed wincing in pain, and Anders pushed her out of the way to take over. Stumbling to her feet, Hawke held her bloodied hand in front of her, half-pointing at the impossible sight.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, Chuckles.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crossbow slung over his back, Varric was stood in the middle of the clinic, dressed as he always had done despite the heatwave that was rolling through Orlais. He had the thumb of one hand tucked into his belt, the other hand reaching up to rest at the back of his neck.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hi,” Hawke breathed, not moving from the spot. If she moved, would he disappear? Was she still asleep? She’d dreamed this enough times for it to be fake. Slipping her thumb under her sleeve, she pressed hard into the last wound she’d gained whilst healing, and winced. No. Not a dream.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fuck.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If the two of you could go into the office rather than doing whatever you’re about to right here,” Anders remarked, brow knotted as he continued healing the woman Hawke had been tending, “I’d appreciate it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Snapping back into herself, Hawke wiped her bloodied hands off on her apron and turned on her heel, not even bothering to gesture for Varric to follow her. It felt like she didn’t breathe again until they were both stood in the office, the door closed behind them - and when she did, the breath she took was reedy and insufficient.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So,” Varric said, with such casualness it was as if nothing had happened, “Maxwell disbanded the Inquisition.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke nodded, collapsing into one of the chairs and pushing her hair out of her eyes. “Don’t small talk me, Varric. Aren’t you meant to be in Kirkwall? You know, the city you signed up to run?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Now Hawke, don’t tell me that gossip reaches all the way out to the back end of Orlais. Surely not.” His quip was as light as his opening line had been, but Varric’s eyes were fixed on her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You didn’t come all the way out to the back end of Orlais to snark at me, Varric,” Hawke replied icily, feeling frustration prick up on her skin. “Surely not.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sighing, Varric pulled Bianca from his back and leant her against the chair next to Hawke’s, heaving himself into it. “How much news do you get?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Enough. You tell Aveline, Aveline tells Merrill and Anders, Merrill and Anders tell me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...Hawke, you - you know about Stroud?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke’s fingers tightened around her knees on instinct. Yes, she knew about Stroud. Carver had written her for that one, his letter coming all the way from Weisshaupt, where Stroud had kept him as he’d promised. It had been weeks and weeks after the siege at Adamant, but the news had gotten to her in the end.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Hawke said, exhaling yet more grief that never seemed to go away. “I do.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I just…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Something cracked in Varric’s voice, and Hawke looked up. Whatever facade he’d had on was gone, now. He was just staring at his hands, resting palm up in his lap, the weathered leather of his gloves shown in all its cracked glory.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke barely remembered moving, but the next thing she knew she was knelt on the ground in front of him, bloodstained hands clasped into his. The moment marked itself indelibly upon her consciousness; a reminder of just how much being in Orlais had changed her. The old Hawke would have pulled away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If you’d gone with us, like he wanted you to,” Varric said, the seams of his gloves pressing hard into her skin with the tightness of his grip, “it - fuck, it could have been you, Hawke.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Pulling his hands close against her chest, and kneeling up enough to lean her forehead against his, Hawke murmured, “Varric...that was years ago.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah,” he chuckled, the sound low and harsh. “The rest of the stuff the Inquisition did, and then ending up in Kirkwall - I guess I thought it would stop me thinking about it. I even wrote a book about them.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke found herself smirking despite everything. “I noticed you skipped a few bits.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, you know how it is, publishers are picky about what crimes you admit to. That and Cassandra knows where I live.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Varric?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She was still curled against him, clinging on as if he might blow away in the wind. He had to be able to tell that her entire body was shaking from the effort of holding on, of holding herself up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why are you here?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Another short, sharp chuckle. Then lips, warm and salty with tears against hers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At some point Anders appeared, by which time they were on the floor and Varric had fallen asleep in her arms. Hawke was overheating from the pressure of his body and the fact that there weren’t any windows open in Anders’s office, but she hadn’t wanted to move for a moment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey,” Anders said, smiling gently at her. “Héléna is doing alright, but Goril is struggling. I’m going to stay out in the clinic with him tonight.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At first Hawke just nodded, but before Anders could step fully out of the room, she said, “Anders?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thank you. For everything.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He smiled at her, distantly, and Hawke’s heart was still swollen as she woke Varric up and led him quietly through the clinic into her and Anders’s bedroom.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There she sat him down on the bed, sitting in the silence as she unlaced his boots, pulled his gloves off, his shirt, taking each item and folding them neatly. She placed them next to Bianca, realising only then that Varric had let </span>
  <em>
    <span>her</span>
  </em>
  <span> pick up the crossbow instead of carrying it himself. She was still thinking about it when she climbed into the bed next to him, apron discarded and hands washed of blood, curling up in the too-warm embrace of his arms.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Neither of them spoke. The longer they put it off, the easier it was to pretend they had nothing that needed saying.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke was woken before dawn the next day when Anders hammered on the door, then pulled it open to call, “You’d better be decent, because I need you. Now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Untangling herself from Varric, who was apparently - much like Anders - a cuddler, Hawke pulled her tunic on and grabbed her apron as she ran. Anders was already back by the side of Goril, the young man who’d been brought in two days ago with a bad fever. As she landed next to him, Anders began barking orders at both her and Gilles, who had now also leapt out of bed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Goril was convulsing, foam spilling from his chapped lips, the froth lit with an unearthly glow as Anders and Justice worked to try and keep him stable. Gilles moved to start grinding the herbs that Hawke had been sent for, and Hawke went running back to the side of the bed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He’s shaking too much for me to get a grip,” Anders said in the echoing, dual-toned voice of his merged form. “If we can’t stop the tremors, we’ll lose him.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can help. You won’t like it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Glowing eyes landed on her. “Will it work?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well,” Anders said, keeping her gaze, “you have a lot to make up for, Marian. Here’s your chance.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Swallowing, Hawke nodded and reached for the dagger in her apron pocket. Unwinding the bandages on her left arm and exposing the myriad of scars there, she swept the blade across the oldest one and closed her eyes. Footsteps moved around her, but she barely noticed them, focused as she was on sensing the blood in her arm and the blood in the shaking body before her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His blood didn’t match hers, it wouldn’t feel right, but she didn’t need it to. She wasn’t giving him her blood; she was giving hers up to take control of his.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Opening her eyes, Hawke flicked her fingers and sent her blood streaming through the air, dangling in strands above the man’s body. Enslaving someone was easy with blood magic - do it by force, and you’d have a powerful golem-like being that would serve you right up until the magic consumed them. But Hawke didn’t want to kill him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Growing up, she’d always been the one who had enjoyed the spells that needed finer control. Fire was interesting to her because it was so hard to control; you couldn’t approach it with brute force like you could other spells. Bethany was the one who’d had the greater power, who could hurl assaults at people so hard they would fly through the air.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But even Hawke, who had long ago mastered trapping the very souls of the people around her, wasn’t certain she could manage this without killing the man.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anders had to know that. He had to think it was bad enough to be worth the risk.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So taking a deep breath, Hawke latched the puppet strings of her blood around Goril’s body and focused everything she had on not giving in to the urge to hold on too tightly. It wasn’t long before the urge became whispers, voices of desire and wrath and more laced through the pulse that thrummed in her ears. His convulsions slowed, but didn’t stop; she got control of two limbs only to lose the others. Hawke winced and pushed more power in, drawing more of her blood from the now weeping wound on her arm, careful to spread it equally and keep everything in balance.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s working!” Anders called suddenly, holding his hands back over and returning to his work. Gilles appeared at that moment as well, reaching over to rub the paste he’d created under the man’s nose, onto his chest, sending the pungent scent into the air.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It made Hawke gag, and realise just how light-headed she was becoming, but she held on. Time became a distant concept: there was nothing but the battle to hold him steady, to hold herself steady, to shut out the voices of the demons that were now screaming in her mind.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t. Her magic was better than them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then she felt Goril’s body settle, and heard Anders calling that he was okay, that she could stop, and the world went black.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke woke to blinding sun and the uncomfortable sensation of a needle being pulled through the flesh of her left arm.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You know,” Anders remarked, tugging the thread, “for a blood mage, you really are terrible at aiming with a knife.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke tried to speak, but found her throat was too dry to form the words fully. “‘m sorry.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was a weight on the bed beside her, a weight that she recognised when warm, rough hands stroked the sweat-slick hair out of her face. Oh. Oh, Varric had seen her. He had seen her, and he was still here. Not that he hadn’t known before, but there was knowing and there was knowing and she’d never possessed another person in front of him before and -</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hell of a way to wake a man up, Chuckles,” Varric murmured, his voice thick and thin all at once. “Bleeding out on the floor like that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gilles appeared, tilting a cup of water to her lips, and Hawke drank in small, careful gulps. “Is Goril alright?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” Anders said, beginning to tie the wound off. You couldn’t heal wounds made from blood magic, not in the normal way. Most of the time, they would heal them the mundane way, and then magically when the last of the residue of her magic was gone. “That was incredibly dangerous, you know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You were screaming at the demons to get out of your head when you collapsed.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke winced. “Are you sure they did?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Justice is,” Anders said, in a tone that marked the end of the conversation. They’d agreed long, long ago, back in Darktown, that if either of them were ever possessed - properly possessed, in Anders’s case - that they’d take care of it. Hawke would take the pain of knowing she might have to kill him if it meant knowing someone would keep her from hurting anyone else.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shifting, Hawke finally let her eyes flicker over to Varric. “Hey,” she said, softly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So,” Varric said, taking the water from Gilles and holding it up to her lips again. “Anders says this is what you do now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It...it is.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His face was stony, but the hand that cradled her head was doing so with a slow, gentle stroke of his thumb over her cheek. The others were still there, still moving around, someone was cleaning the wound on her arm - but all Hawke could see was Varric.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You can’t go out in the world again like that, you know,” Varric said, with a sigh.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke twisted her mouth to the side in a crooked half-smile. “It’s...not like I could anyway.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Heh,” Varric chuckled, resting the cup on his thigh. “Hawke, I - I can’t -”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You killed so many people, Hawke.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her arm was heavy when Hawke managed to lift it up, doing little more than flopping the back of her hand against his cheek - but Varric leaned into it, closing his eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And in a low, cracked voice, he murmured, “I really shouldn’t have come here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But,” Hawke said, dragging her knuckles over his cheekbone, feeling his stubble scratch her wrist, “you did.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re a hard problem to quit, Hawke,” he said hoarsely, the hand against her head pulling lightly on her hair.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Then don’t.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It isn’t that simple.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The simple thing,” Varric said, turning to kiss the back of her hand, “would be going back to Kirkwall and doing my damn job.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke knew she should agree. But she was heavy from head to toe, and hurting, and so very tired of carrying round the bolt he’d lodged in her heart a decade ago.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So she let herself say the thing she wanted to, not the thing she should.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Please don’t.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He had to, of course. He was too prominent a person to just disappear, too recogniseable in a way that she never had been, and - and he wanted to stay there. To help fix the things she’d broken. To live the life she didn’t want to take away from him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And to her surprise, Hawke found that she didn’t want to leave the clinic. She’d relished her name losing enough infamy, and her appearance changing enough, that she could actually go outside safely. It was amazing what growing your hair long and putting on weight could do. Sometimes, when she looked in the mirror, Hawke didn’t even recognise herself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But whenever there was a trade discussion going on between Kirkwall and Orlais, the Viscount’s path always seemed to take him through de Montfort lands. His convoy would always stop for a few days at the town that lay upon the merchant’s road, and his party would always stay at the same inn on the outskirts.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anders always loudly and pointedly complained about giving up his bed, but he never stopped doing so - and if Hawke noticed that the bed he crawled into instead was half the time Gilles’s, half the time one of the tavern staff’s, well, it wasn’t her place to comment. He never fully moved into one or the other, and always came back to steal the blankets from her when Varric wasn’t already doing so.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was strange, and not what she’d wanted, and Hawke missed Merrill and her brother and the people they’d lost along the way. Still, little by little, visit by visit, she managed to claw back the person who mattered the most.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But everything changes eventually.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Varric’s here,” Anders called, wandering from the study through the clinic.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke snorted. “Yeah, right. There’s no delegation due through here for months.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He’s not with a delegation.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was a knowing smirk in Anders’s voice, one that made Hawke stop so abruptly she almost dropped the tray of clean vials in her hands. Her mouth fell open, and Anders - still smirking - reached out to take the tray from her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well,” he said, canting his head to the side. “Go on then.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time Hawke got to the bottom of their stairs, Varric had made it into the back corridor. Bianca was slung over his shoulder as normal, but the other he had a pack. She was halfway through running up to him when she spotted it, her feet stumbling beneath her as she came to a halt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s a lot of stuff,” she said as casually as possible, putting her hands in the pocket of her apron, “for someone who normally only stays a night or two, Viscount.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Slowly, barely breaking eye contact, Varric dropped the bag, then placed Bianca on it, and shrugged his now free shoulders.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You know, Orlais is growing on me,” Varric said, looking at the window that was cracked, the walls where the paper was peeling, the dusty staircase behind her. “I thought I might stay a bit longer.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hawke opened her mouth to say something witty in response - but all that came out was, “Oh.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Also,” added Varric, stepping forward and taking her hands. “It’s just Varric. The Viscount is - actually, you know, I didn’t stay long enough to care.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...oh.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Grinning widely, Varric tugged her down and bumped his nose against hers. “You okay there, Hawke?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck you, Varric.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Well.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’d always been the one who was good at words, anyway.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Varric’s laughter rumbled against her lips as he kissed her, pushing her backwards until the windowsill jabbed hard into her spine, his gloved hands splaying roughly against her stomach, and Hawke promptly ceased caring that anyone could walk into the corridor at any moment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Chuckles,” Varric said, breathlessly, “I missed you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You had better be staying, Varric Tethras. This had better be it. Because I’d rather have another twenty years of stolen days here and there than -”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m staying.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Whatever that means?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Varric’s hands ceased roaming, and pulled her tightly against him. “Yeah, Chuckles. Whatever it means.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you so much for reading! &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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